Advice for sandbox GM

[Nylanfs]

For those that do more sandbox and random elements in your campaign you might want to checkout Squareware. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store...d=IPFGANYGTWSW

[HywelPhillips]

I second the Squareware recommendation for fantasy games. Likewise there are a bunch of useful modules full of tables or self-contained content on the store.

The AAW mini-dungeons are useful for when you just want a generic one-session place of interest:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store...?id=AAWFG5EMDT

The rumours, notes and book collections are good for planting sandbox seeds:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store...=IPFG5EAGRNABC

Most of the Raging Swan Press modules are designed to slot in and inspire sandbox stuff. I particularly like Urban Dressing and Wilderness Dressing but the lairs and villages are useful drop-ins too.
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store...=IPFG5EAGRNABC

And I'm sure there are many more good products besides, those are just the ones I'm using in my current games.

Cheers, Hywel

[WinterSoldier7]

I have a world map filled with pins. These pins lead to Story entries which might details, for example, the details of a city, something encountered on the road etc. Some of these encounters are pre-written adventures.

I'm sure there are many ways to approach it, but this has worked for me for years.

[A Social Yeti]

Our replies crossed...

~
However, if you'd rather use encounters as your primary building block, there is an extension which does exactly that:
https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/141/view
~
I don't think it is nonsensical or arbitrary, myself, but it might not mesh well with your own mental model of what you want to be first class citizens and which you'd like to have as the container. Which is absolutely allowed, of course! We all favour software whose default model matches our own preference pretty well (it's why I still loathe Photoshop every time I am forced to fire it up).

Cheers, Hywel

Thank you thank you thank you. that is exactly what i am talking about and what i am baffled FG is not doing on its own out of the box already.

uuhh wit a min. something went weird on me... i clicked your link but i swear i wound up here
https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/1233/view

not "Mad Nomad's Enhanced Encounter Window" as the link now sends me. I was at the store page with this at the very top "Encounter Descriptions"
which is where this image is from that shows an encounter offering exactly what i am surprised it did not already offer.



And i don't really care about the free form text box, it's the links the main text container (story) that matters, and the image container link is also great to get. With those things inside the one encounter window, a GM can have everything any encounter needs in it when they open IT up.


It's the systematic nature of what the designers connected to what and the labels they gave them, that seems to suggest their design POV to me.

If the designer POV was, we plan that an encounter may be opened up arbitrarily and run without a story item leading to it...well clearly the FG system don't deal in that situation, it explcitly blocks it, thogh it is technologically possible to do. That's part of what says design intent to me. They can link to it, but their work flow design POV seems to simply have had no rational need or reason to do so.

sure looks like the design POV is:
We expect to get to the encounter objects from the text over here in the story container.

now imagine a source book like this

only has printed in it what FG's "encounters" container holds as is.
I'd be betting that's missing expectations for most GMs.

~
So, let me ask you a question - if the Encounter record had a formatted text field within the window that allowed you to manually add links to other FG records within that encounter, would that address your issue? Like I've just said, you're never going to be able to click a button and automatically open all windows that link to an encounter, but you could manually put the links you'd like in the encounter.

I was not meaning to suggest a single button to open all related things at once, but to say, why are not all things the designers know are needed for an encounter, accessible from within that encounter's container?

The above image of the 3rd party add on is what i am speaking about, they have a link to the story container right there in the encounter item itself, just like a link to the story container anywhere else it can be made.
And so relative to keeping encounters and their descriptions together, no manual efforts on names needed, it just is all together now by flowing(linking) back and forth between all required elements freely. Not opened all at once automatically, but just all things a GM will need for running the encounter, are accessible/reachable from within the one "encounter" window.



And just to say on it. I find a design POV that was taking sandboxing into account as a feature to cover, would probably not have labeled the mechanically main text container for that as "story."
And a design POV that was explcitly considering running modules/premeditated stories, but not sandboxes so much, seems totally rational to use the label story on the main text container for informing users of how the system functions.

You can probably get why we'd believe this idea that FG is a story based system. As we are giving the designers the benefit of the doubt to see it that way.

FG team gets all the best possible to give benefit of the doubt when we treat a given label, as a carefully chosen and meaningfully informing of the functions label.
If it is not functioning as labeled, then it would seem the label is categorically a design flaw waiting to be corrected.
Maybe "Main text" or All text" or maybe best, "GM's text" would be more a appropriate label to inform end user how the designers know that container functions.


In design POV alone we wind up directed to very different headspaces by the label itself.
When we say "story" goes in there, we likely imagine where we need to provide access to that is a different flow in the design.
Than if we called it "GM's text."

As a design when you consider , "where all will the GM need access to the "story"" i bet we have a different systematic POV on that. That's going to be a real different pattern than if what we were considering was, "when and where will we need to proved the "GM's text.""

See? The labels themselves are also are design directors.
A "story" container within a RP campaign would have X in it, and be needed by the GM in Y places. I mean if we assume the label is not arbitrary of course.
A "GM's text" container would clearly include all that story stuff, but also more. As well as be something we know the GM needs in other places besides when "story" alone is what's going off.








It was asked earlier so here's how my table sandbox works:

much like Hywel said, i make/start a campaign mostly out of encounters.

I really let the players direct it all, the sandbox is truly open and mostly being crafted uniquely just for them as we go. If they wind up on some world calamity averting epic story, that's because they were busy expressing interest in such, not because i had that planned already.
I'm carefully paying attention to what the players are talking about with each other. And craft the illusion that what they been telling each other they think would be cool, wow that's what was going on here in the world all along already. Yall are freaking smart you totally figured out that saboteur plot going, what was it that gave me away (i had no such plot going on i just rolled with them really)?


I got a map and it's got Points of Interest on it that are detailed out with some story hooks to discover. The map pins work great for this yes.
But unlike more typical map/hex crawls mine are fewer and farther between. What i really got is a big create of categorically organized encounters i can draw on, kind a just like my crate of vinyl really.


What's getting used? No clue i read the room and pull up what i thinks going to be hot next. I am sandboxing more like a PG system than a premeditated map crawl.
Or to say as i try to make it be:

In my sandbox the players do not discover my sandcastles to be in awe of my creativity, they build their own and awe me with theirs.

As a camping unfolds and the players begin to drive themselves down some specific path, then actually we do reach a stage when a lot more of what's going on will flow out of story more than laying it down as they are walking onto it. Because now the story has taken over more for the on the fly mixing. But guess what? I'm not remaking encounters i already got in the crate. The on the fly encounter grab never stops being useful even with a strong story line going.


Thanks again everyone for yalls help. The link to the add on is exactly covering what i was feeling the gap of in FG for me.
And hopefully what i feel is basic sandbox functionally needs, will one day be out of the box functionality for FG.

[A Social Yeti]

For those that do more sandbox and random elements in your campaign you might want to checkout Squareware. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store...d=IPFGANYGTWSW

Ok this is looking like it could be real useful, thanks i'll take a look at that.

[Trenloe]

I didn't read all of your post, sorry I don't have time today.

But I did want to reply to one aspect:

And just to say on it. I find a design POV that was taking sandboxing into account as a feature to cover, would probably not have labeled the mechanically main text container for that as "story."
And a design POV that was explcitly considering running modules/premeditated stories, but not sandboxes so much, seems totally rational to use the label story on the main text container for informing users of how the system functions.

So, going back 20 years when FG was first created - the main database record was called "Encounter". It's not like the encounters we have now (a list of NPCs with map token placement) but it was a formatted text field that allowed a GM to build his encounter - adding links, etc. to the "encounter" entry. Fast forward 12 or so years (I can't remember exactly when the current "encounter" functionality came in) and the "encounter" format we have now was introduced - i.e. a list of NPCs and map token placement. As the database already had data stored under encounter, the database location was called "battle". So, we now had "story" entries that were originally called "encounter" in the database and remain so now, and new "encounter" entries that were called "battle" in the database - as that's all they were, a list of creatures and their map token location.

That might sound confusing, but what I'm trying to highlight is that the original design POV was to have encounters as formatted text fields, allowing the GM to add text, links, etc.. Over time these were renamed to "Story", but their functionality remained the same, it's just how you use them and how you perceive how they are used.

I don't think there's a 100% accurate/intuitive label for it - as different GMs will use it different ways. Which takes me back to what I said in my first reply in this thread:

Just because the sidebar entry is called "Story" doesn't mean that FG is story centric. A story entry is just a bunch of formatted text - which can include some links to other FG records. Use it as you want to - an entry can contain links to encounter, random encounter tables, generic maps, etc., etc. - making a story entry a very handy placeholder/reference to quickly get to the data you might need. It's essentially a collection of FG data, don't get hung up on the name "story".

[A Social Yeti]

I didn't read all of your post, sorry I don't have time today.

But I did want to reply to one aspect:

So, going back 20 years when FG was first created - the main database record was called "Encounter". It's not like the encounters we have now (a list of NPCs with map token placement) but it was a formatted text field that allowed a GM to build his encounter - adding links, etc. to the "encounter" entry. Fast forward 12 or so years (I can't remember exactly when the current "encounter" functionality came in) and the "encounter" format we have now was introduced - i.e. a list of NPCs and map token placement. As the database already had data stored under encounter, the database location was called "battle". So, we now had "story" entries that were originally called "encounter" in the database and remain so now, and new "encounter" entries that were called "battle" in the database - as that's all they were, a list of creatures and their map token location.

That might sound confusing, but what I'm trying to highlight is that the original design POV was to have encounters as formatted text fields, allowing the GM to add text, links, etc.. Over time these were renamed to "Story", but their functionality remained the same, it's just how you use them and how you perceive how they are used.

I don't think there's a 100% accurate/intuitive label for it - as different GMs will use it different ways. Which takes me back to what I said in my first reply in this thread:

Thanks for the insight there. that's a great show of developing a better system. The first take was: an encounter IS its own thing more self contained. But then no the real function of encounters is they are simply containers of links that point to all various individual building blocks that encounters are made up of. NPCs, loots, maps, images and descriptions, would be the basic category building blocks of encounters. It would make for a much more flexible and less data redundant system. great.

So yes a much better system to have an "encounter" be nothing but a collection of links that point to all the parts that the encounter is made up of.
Question remains, what's design reason for only linking to some parts of what the encounter is built from, but not all? As if we never imagined a GM might "run" an encounter but would for sure only ever read from the main text flow out to the encounters?



And I am having my mind blown here right now to find out, you made the extension that is exactly the functionality I expected FG to do out of the box already. dam you like some kind of super dev or something.

I clearly failed to find the wording to describe for you what I was talking about fully, but yes exactly what you did there.
https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/1233/view

the free form text part is cool too, but it it is the linking to the main text container that is the real functionality i was talking about and the image container is really making it a fully featured encounter that could be run by opening it up directly.

that is exactly what i went in assuming i'd be able to do already.


again deluxe thanks, hope that finds it's way to the out of box functionality one day.
I did install and run it, exactly what i was trying to describe the function.